Friday, January 30, 2015

For every up there's a down, and no industry knows that better than the airlines. No, I'm not talking about takeoffs and landings, but the good news/bad news of declining fuel prices.

As an airline, Hawaiian may have spent an unduly long time on the ground. It formed in 1929 but when commercial aviation reached its mid-century heyday it was the Pan Ams and the Uniteds and not Hawaiian that was lifting travelers by the plane full.

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

When Air Asia first learned it had lost flight 8501, en route from Surabaya to
Singapore on December 28th, the airline was somewhat prepared; its
communications department had recently attended an IATA event focused entirely
on handling crises in the digital age. It would not be the first airline to lose an
airplane, or even the first to have one mysteriously disappear in some vast
expanse of ocean. Why not learn from the experience of others? The benefits seem clear, at least as far as the airline is
concerned. The same cannot be said for Indonesia's government.

Thursday, January 22, 2015

See updated post on this subject here.Nadia Marcinko, a popular figure in the online community of pilots and a role model for women interested in aviation seems to have had a less-than-model-perfect past as an acquaintance and possible enabler of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, two British newspapers are reporting. If they are accurate, it is not clear whether the blonde aviatrix was victim or co-conspirator.

A civil lawsuit filed in Florida is breathing new life into the long-known pedophile inclinations of American hedge fund manager Epstein because of new allegations that Prince Andrew was a participant in Epstein's organized trysts and orgies with teenagers.

His tip that I check out this skit in which Sir Patrick Stewart acts out the behaviors of the most annoying passengers on a plane, had me LOLing and kicking the seat in front of me. I think you'll do the same. So here, courtesy of Henry and the folks at Jimmy Kimmel Live, is the four minute clip.

Go ahead, it's Friday, you'd waste 4 minutes somewhere else without nearly as much payback. And by the way, I'm busted on applauding the landing and kissing the flight attendant. How about you?

Monday, January 12, 2015

How long does it take to undo years of effort to improve the way flight crews communicate and share safety-related concerns? About two and a half hours if we're talking about United. That's how long the airline allowed a reported safety/security issue to spiral out of control until 13 experienced flight attendants refused to fly a Boeing 747 from San Francisco to Seoul last summer losing their jobs in the process.

The whole sorry episode began when Jeff Montgomery, a conscientious first officer doing a walk-around of United Flight 869 on July 14, 2014, spotted graffiti written in grime on the underside of the jumbo jet's tail, some 30 feet above where he stood on the tarmac. How it got there and when was anybody's guess. Montgomery took a photograph of what he told one flight attendant was a "disturbing" image; two crudely drawn round faces - one smiling one enigmatic - and the words "Bye Bye", then took the photo to the cockpit for review by the flight crew.

Maintenance and ground security were called to examine the message, causing a delay in the closing of the doors and more significantly causing the cabin crew to start wondering what was going on.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

The lawsuit filed by the husband of a woman who disappeared on Malaysian Airlines 370, may be headed back to court. An appeals court in Illinois has ruled that the request for discovery filed against Boeing and Malaysia Airlines on behalf of Lee Kim Fatt was improperly dismissed by a judge in Chicago.

The much-publicized filing by Monica Kelly of Ribbeck Law Chartered came just 20 days after the plane disappeared. Cook County Judge Kathy Flanagan considered it for two weeks then tossed the claim as she had done to three previously filed by Ribbeck Law. In the process, the judge threatened to sanction the law firm if it brought any more "frivolous" cases before her.